CNTK can be included as a library in your Python, C#, or C++ programs, or used as a standalone machine-learning tool through its own model description language (BrainScript). In addition you can use the CNTK model evaluation functionality from your Java programs.

CNTK supports 64-bit Linux or 64-bit Windows operating systems. To install you can either choose pre-compiled binary packages, or compile the toolkit from the source provided in GitHub.

CNTK is also one of the first deep-learning toolkits to support the Open Neural Network Exchange ONNX format, an open-source shared model representation for framework interoperability and shared optimization. Co-developed by Microsoft and supported by many others, ONNX allows developers to move models between frameworks such as CNTK, Caffe2, MXNet, and PyTorch.